Todd And Margo Chester some of the issue with Tables is ODF. ODF supports more forms of tables than MS Office does. I do copy and paste tables quite commonalty inside openoffice full formatting transfer. I guess you have save mode .doc. Basically stop being stupid and save openoffice native and most of your table problems just disappear. Its the doc import export process that shots the hell out of tables. Go-oo does handle that better so less table problems.
I have no issues with OpenOffice and tables thinking all my documents remain ODF internally and are sent out to externals as PDF files.
Printing an envelope exactly what is up I only mail merged about 40 this morning with openoffice. This is not strange for me either. I have not had a issue with envelope printing since early openoffice 2.x time frame. Exactly what was the last openoffice you tried. Please don't be another troll who just because it did not work in a old version it still has to be broken now.
For access I have used Kexi for years. Currently waiting for it to be come free on windows instead of the 99 EUR. If you have to use openoffice base back onto mysql unless you want to go insane.